Jack Wheeler's house (black shutters) is seen in the background from… (The News Journal/FRED COMEGYS,…)

April 11, 2011|By Hugh Lessig, hlessig@dailypress.com | 247-7821

The murder of Jack Wheeler is lacking some basic facts – suspect, motive and location, to name three – so speculation has rushed in to fill the vacuum.

Given Wheeler's career as a Washington insider, some of that speculation reads like a potboiler – and while interesting, is unproven.

One theory in the blogosphere notes that Wheeler, who was 66, was an authority on chemical and biological warfare, and his death occurred just after strange mass deaths of birds. Connection?

For this theory to work, three dots need to line up: 1) the mass bird deaths had to be caused by the release of military chemical weapons, apparently by accident; 2) an upset Wheeler threatened to expose this; and 3) he was killed for it.

The part about Wheeler's expertise has basis in fact. It is partly chronicled in the book "The Long, Gray Line." Wheeler had a distinguished record as a cadet after graduating from Hampton High School in 1962.

After Wheeler returned from Vietnam, he worked in the Pentagon on the staff of an assistant secretary of defense. Part of his job involved reviewing the utility of biological weapons such as anthrax bombs, writes author Rick Atkinson.

Wheeler concluded that "there were no circumstances in which the president would conclude that biologicals provided a useful supplement to the American arsenal," the book says.

That analysis was a factor when President Richard Nixon renounced the use and production of biological weapons in 1969, Wheeler said he was told.

Other thoughts come from Wheeler's wife, Katherine Klyce, in an interview she gave to Slate.com. The family has offered a $25,000 reward, but she said, "I think perhaps no one has been on the reward because they've already been paid."

"The way they disposed of his body, it's a miracle anybody ever found it. That just sounds like a pro to me," she said.

Thomas McInerney, a retired Air Force officer, told ABC News: "A man with that experience, it could have been foul play to get some of the secrets he had."

Wheeler served three U.S. presidents in various capacities and was a defense consultant at the time of his death. He was a driving force behind the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, and Atkinson notes in his book that Wheeler had an impressive rolodex of contacts.

Friends closer to the murdered man aren't necessarily buying into any theory, but they aren't ruling anything out, either.

Art Schulcz was a classmate of Wheeler's at West Point.

His death "wasn't just a shock," he said. "We are at that age where we die."

But Schulcz noted how Wheeler's intellect touched on so many subjects, including cyber warfare.

"There are all these theories floating around," he said, "but what you have is a person who is inexplicably murdered."